It's not perfect, but it brings a little peace

***

ROUGH TRADE, 10.99

IT'S good for an artist to find their home. Eddi Reader's return to Scotland a few years ago coincided with her immersion in the folk music community, a creative, collaborative, spontaneous realm that must feel like a different world after her two decades of sparring with the egocentric, market-led pop industry as the singer in Fairground Attraction and then as a Brit-winning solo artist.

Her last album, Eddi Reader Sings the Songs of Robert Burns, did precisely what it said on the tin and will surely keep her in Burns-related commissions for many years to come. Her approach is not for everyone, though. With some inevitability, she has been criticised by traditionalists for rewriting some of the music. Her fragrant interpretations miss some of the spark, stridency and mischief of Burns, but there is no doubt that she has helped to win the Bard a few more pop fans.

For Peacetime, she has deliberately called in many of the contacts she made while working on the Burns material. The players on this album form a roll-call of the most respected Scottish musicians in their field, including fiddle player John McCusker (who also produced the album), whistles maestro Michael McGoldrick, accordionist Andy Cutting, Capercaillie's Donald Shaw on organ plus ace-on-bass Ewan Vernal. However, Reader retains her ties with longtime musical partner Boo Hewerdine to produce a coherent blend of their gentle pop originals and lilting interpretations of a range of traditional numbers, including three more Burns songs, a couple of love ballads and the closing stomp of The Calton Weaver.

A background anecdote accompanies the lyrics in the CD booklet with illuminating recollections, explanations and observations. It is clear from this that the material Reader has chosen resonates very strongly with her, yet her voice, as pure and pretty and precision controlled as always, does not convey much dynamism or drama.

Purists may again frown at her careful additions to Burns. She and Hewerdine have written verses to accompany the existing chorus of Leezie Lindsay, developing the theme of its "wid ye gang tae the Hielands..." refrain, with their own weary response to city living. I would have preferred to hear something else more radical than the fairly standard take on Ye Banks And Braes O' Bonnie Doon, but the yearning Aye Waukin-O is nicely rendered.

The yearning also reverberates through the more pop-orientated tracks - not a yearning for love, as in the Burns songs, but, as the album title suggests, for peace and contentment. In contrast to the conventional treatment of the trad material, the Trashcan Sinatras song Prisons is a loping, rather than lilting note to self to throw off those mental - and spiritual - chains. The quasi-spiritual theme continues with The Shepherd's Song, beautifully, mournfully delivered by the Coldstream Guards brass section, with words penned by Reader and Trashcans guitarist John Douglas. The whole thing glistens with Christmas goodwill.

Douglas's Should I Pray? questions faith in simple, poignant, contemporary terms ("should I pray? Is it safe?... it don't look safe to have faith") over a lovely, plangent, after-hours arrangement, while Safe as Houses - a sedate pop meditation on the personal fallout of the London terror attacks of July 2005 - is another simple, elegant exploration of what happens when someone's spiritual conviction impacts on others' lives. The desire for a personal and a political peace is also the driving force of the Hewerdine title track.

Charming, pleasant and tasteful as these songs are, they are no match for Reader's cover of Declan O'Rourke's swooningly gorgeous Galileo (Someone Like You), which stands out a mile for its skyscraping poetry (yup, even in the company of Burns). "I sing it cause I'm in love with it" says Reader simply in the sleevenotes. And it sounds it too, as she delivers her most passionate performance on the album. A bit more of this sort of swooping lyricism could have lifted Peacetime into quite another league.

POP

THE EARLIES: THE ENEMY CHORUS

***

679 RECORDINGS, 10.99

SOMETIME King Creosote backing band The Earlies are founded on a perpetual exchange of ideas and music between two sets of core musicians - one lot based in Manchester, the other in Texas. They have described their second album The Enemy Chorus as a "hidden concept album", which might explain why the music gets off to such an uncertain, anonymous start, quite removed from the beatific Beach Boys textures of their debut These Were The Earlies. However, when it does hit its stride, The Enemy Chorus delivers ambitiously realised widescreen adventures in folk (Broken Chain), prog (Bad is as Bad Does) and jazz (Foundation and Earth), plus two pocket psychedelic symphonies in Gone for the Most Part and the sitar-soaked Breaking Point. (Fiona Shepherd)

JUST JACK: OVERTONES

***

MERCURY, 11.99

LET'S get The Streets comp-arison out of the way at the outset. Just Jack, aka Jack Allsopp, is one of a number of young rapping songwriters to emerge in the wake of Mike Skinner's success. Slicker than Jamie T and less challenging than Plan B, he is funky and infectious in a way Skinner hasn't pulled off in a while. Overtones is refreshingly varied - the brooding Lost or the languid Spectacular Failures prove Allsop can do hangdog with the best of them. However, the contrived kitchen-sink Life Stories shows he doesn't yet have the lyrical sophistication of his peers. (Fiona Shepherd)

JAZZ

MARTIN SPEAKE & MARK SANDERS: SPARK

***

PUMPKIN RECORDS, 13.99

THIS inaugural disc on Speake's own label is a series of wholly improvised studio duets with percussionist Mark Sanders. Characteristically inventive, the music stands at the more accessible end of the free improvisation spectrum. (Kenny Mathieson)

FOLK

MAGGIE MACINNES: RAN NA MN (A WOMAN'S SONG)

***

MARRAM MUSIC, 12.99

THESE songs in Gaelic and English were assembled for the singer's ran na Mn concert project for Celtic Connections in 2004. The project was inspired by Gaelic women bards and singers, and, while not everything comes off, this is often beautiful and always well executed music. (Kenny Mathieson)

CLASSICAL

NICKY SPENCE: MY FIRST LOVE

***

UNIVERSAL CLASSICS, 11.99

NICKY Spence has an airy, pleasant voice, but, as his first major album proves, he likes to project it as all things to all men. From Italian folk songs to pallid Burns settings, high opera to West End musical, sacred lollipops to Hollywood theme tunes, Spence covers the lot with an innocuous glow. (Kenneth Walton)